# A-RA-TU (ʾarṣ̂atu) > earth (feminine noun—PS \*ʾar(V)ṣ̂- "earth") A Linear A word in the Linear A Lexicon. The reading is a proposal and carries its tier. - Reading: ʾarṣ̂atu - Confidence: Candidate. A comparison worth testing; the evidence is thin or the word is rare. - Root: [\*ʾar(V)ṣ̂-]() 'earth' - Kind: Toponym - Language: Semitic - Signs: A (a) · RA (ra) · TU (tu) ## Compared forms - Akkadian: erṣetu(m) "earth, land, ground"—standard citation form erṣetum carries feminine mimation, supporting ʾarṣ̂atum as regular East-Semitic-style case marking - Ugaritic: 𐎀𐎗𐎕 *ʾarṣ* — ʾarṣ "earth" (ṣ̂→ṣ merger) - Hebrew: אֶרֶץ *ʾereṣ* — ʾereṣ (אֶרֶץ) "earth, land" (ṣ̂→ṣ merger) - Arabic: *ʾarḍ-* — ʾarḍ- "earth" (ṣ̂→ḍ, preserves lateral) - Aramaic: *ʾarʕ-* — ʾarʕ- "earth" (ṣ̂→ʕ fricativization) - South Arabian: *ʾrḍ* — ʾrḍ "earth" (ṣ̂→ḍ, preserves lateral) ## Attestations - [ZA 7a](): A-RA-TU 4 — earth (offering category) ## Commentary ZA 7a, a Zakros allocation tablet: A-RA-TU 4, beside A-RE-TU-MI, which words or a number may have followed, ʾarṣ̂-ummī 'Earth is my mother'. ʾarṣ̂atu 'earth', PS *ʾar(V)ṣ̂-, -TU the feminine -at(u); the emphatic lateral ṣ̂ is unwritten, as in A-RE-TU-MI. A-RA-TU keeps the a of the absolute state, and A-RE-TU-MI reduces it to e in the construct before -ummī: the noun and the theophoric name stand on one tablet. A-RA-TU-ME, a hapax heading on the roundel HT Wc 3024, is ʾarṣ̂atum with mimation, as Akkadian erṣetum. Mimation marks the nonbound singular in both genders in Proto-Semitic, *ṭāb-at-u-m beside *ṭāb-u-m (Huehnergard 2019, 59–60, Table 3.7), and in Amorite, a-še-ra-tum, ḫa-na-tum, ni-iḫ-ma-tam, where it is 'common but apparently optional' (George and Krebernik 2022, 131). Minoan writes it on three masculine singulars, RI-SU-MA, MA-RU-ME and JA-SA-SA-RA-ME, against more than 200 without, so at that rate the eight other feminine -at common nouns are expected bare. ## Same root - [A-RA-TU-ME]() (ʾarṣ̂atum) - [A-RE-TU-MI]() (ʾarṣ̂-ummī) ## References - Reading: di Mino - George, Andrew R.; Krebernik, Manfred (2022), Two Remarkable Vocabularies: Amorite-Akkadian Bilinguals!. Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale,116,Presses Universitaires de France,113–166 - Huehnergard, John (2019), Proto-Semitic. In Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na‘ama (eds.), The Semitic Languages,Routledge,49–79 --- Page: https://linear-a.ai/lexicon/A-RA-TU/ Licence: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Cite as: di Mino, Tom. 2026. Linear A Lexicon. Plasma AI. https://linear-a.ai/. Data: kaphtor, commit 50525edd.